Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Book 8 of 2016 -- Caring for Yourself While Caring for Your Aging Parents

Caring
for Yourself While Caring for Your Aging Parents: How to Help, How to
Survive

Claire
Berman (New York: Henry Holt Publishers) 255 pages.

Statisticians
and demographers keep telling us that we are going to have a massive
number of frail elderly in a few years. The oldest of the Baby
Boomers are now 70. What does this mean for us as a society? What
might it mean for the church?

It
means that there are going to be more and more people developing
diseases and conditions of old age. It means that there are going to
be more and more family and friends challenged with the task of
helping to care for someone who was, once, a caregiver him or
herself.

This
book (published in 1996) was given to me some years ago. Insides
there is a note that reminds me it came from one of my “more
mature” moms. [One of the benefits of having grown up in one
congregation is that I have a number of surrogate parents, and as we
were the youngest family in that particular circle (mainly choir
families) all the surrogate parents are “more mature”]. I had
never made myself read it. My official reason is that I have never
gotten around to it. Unofficially I suspect it is because it
is always challenging to think of one's parents (surrogate and
actual) as getting to that point of needing care.

The
beauty of this book is that it does not grow out of some “expert”
deciding to tell people what they need to know. Instead it grows out
of the author's own experience, buttressed by research and interview
both with caregivers and with professionals in the field. It is
inherently practical and down to earth and honest. It
names tasks but also talks about the emotional and mental toll that
comes with this new way of being with your parent.

In
these pages we find tips and resources, a “where to look” sort of
thing (though as a US publication these “where to look” type tips
are of less direct use for us in Canada). We find stories that show
us where some of the greatest rewards and challenges come from. We
find warnings
about what could go “wrong”. We find reassurance that there is no
right way to do this caregiving. And
at the end of each chapter we find a bulleted summary of what was
just discussed.

In
the future the church is going to be filled with both the “frail
elderly” and the family and friends who are helping them. As
leaders in the church we need to develop tools to help support these
people. Or maybe redevelop/reawaken those tools and skills because I
think once upon a time we (as a community) had them. With each new
generation there are new wrinkles – distance between family members
in a much more mobile culture being a big one. But we have the tools
within our communities to do it.

Our
parents will age. (So will we). Most of them (and us) will lose
functioning to one degree or another for one reason or another. Some
faster, some slower, some sooner, some later. We (and those who will care for us) will all have to
adapt to a new reality. It is good to have resources that will help
us make the shift.